


The More That I

by Cranberries (Winchester_Werewolf)



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (kind of), Ableism, Art, Canon Disabled Character, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Coming of Age, Cultural Differences, Daddy Issues, Death, Disability, Disabled Character, During The Hobbit, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Elf Culture & Customs, Elves, Family Dynamics, Goldsickness, Halls of Mandos, Homesickness, Interspecies Relationship(s), Language Barrier, Large Families, Largely Canon Complaint, Middle Earth, Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Multi, Queer Character, Queer Themes, The Arkenstone is Bad News, ambiguous real world locations, environmental sciences
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-08 20:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17392793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester_Werewolf/pseuds/Cranberries
Summary: I could say, perhaps, that there was something I could have done to change how things had played out. That if I hadn't skipped my lecture, had taken a later bus, had gotten off a stop closer to home, things might have ended differently.Yet what happened was outside of any mortal control. Maybe it had been an accident; simply a small hole in the fabric of existence I had happened to fall through where others hadn’t.Either way, I ended up in a place from whence I could never return.My soul torn asunder and sewn to another.And perhaps I was better for it.Even if I was dead.-Or: a mortal dies and a mountain, once prosperous, grown from a chasm, now lays desolate; housing only a dragon, an ethereal jewel, and purpose.





	1. Act I Part I

**Author's Note:**

> I love MGiME fics, they're my absolute favourite and bring me endless joy. This is to y'all who've written them, those that love them, and those who've yet to create them. You're the best and I love you.
> 
> I've also never seen a disabled OC before, and as a disabled person, I rolled with it and had fun. This is a passion project and I've spent a needless amount of time drawing timelines and stitching my version of Middle Earth together just for a laugh. Also: the OC remains disabled for the entirety of the fic. It's a mixture between largely book universe with movie elements thrown in. 
> 
> I've tried to make this as ~realistic~ as possible within the confines of the world and the magic I've manipulated for the sake of the plot. This includes indifferences to characters, confusion, no convenient dumpings of characters in certain locations, language barriers, quarrels between conflicting characters, and dealing with normal human things despite feeling as though just then isn't the time :) 
> 
> This is the first half of chapter one - I couldn't decide how to split it into two cleanly... so split it into... a bunch?

 

 **W** hoever invented nine o’clock tutorials were an unusually cruel and devious person. Sleep hadn’t come easily last night and my six-thirty alarm had murdered any chance I had had at being a functional human being. I was exhausted, shoulders aching from my backpack, and could only stare wistfully at my mobile phone rather than at the tutor at the front of the classroom.

Were university rooms still classrooms outside of secondary school?

I had woken up earlier that morning before the sun had risen, feeling as though I hadn’t an ounce of sleep inside me. Even after a carton of iced coffee (something I only ever drank at exam time) my bones were sore and heavy. I scratched at my eyes and hoped I hadn’t smeared mascara all over my cheeks.

“Remember,” the tutor, Jenn Something, was saying at the front of the class, “In cases of natural disaster, there are factors to consider outside of the obvious: socioeconomic status of the country must be considered –”

Rah-rah. Usual rabble. Even now, two semesters deep into humanitarian law, I felt bitter my tutors were only grad students and not, well, teachers. It made me feel rather stupid for being so salty about it: of course, there wouldn’t be professors to hold tutorials for a throwaway unit. I yawned and stuffed it behind my hand. Why waste a professional when there were grad students under their thumbs? _Boom_ , profit.

I glanced down at my phone again and turned the page of my downloaded fan-fiction. Sweet-sweet _Star Wars_ goodness to wash away the boredom. I had downloaded it before I had left for the bus that morning, patting setting-powder onto my full face of makeup. It had been my routine for years: wake-up, make tea, take meds, blast music through headphones, and prepare for the day by reading reams and reams of fan-fiction whilst putting mascara on at the same time. It was the only time of day I felt relaxed and not stressed out of my nog.

Besides, I wasn’t the only one distracted by my phone in the room. A girl next to me was scrolling down FaceBook, and I could see someone using the free university WiFi to stream what suspiciously looked like _BoJack Horseman_ on a giant Samsung with his headphones in. There was even someone doing another unit’s assignment in front of me. Couldn’t blame him: it looked like contract law. Poor bastard.

There was a collective sigh of relief when the tutor gave up her losing battle and skipped to the end of the PowerPoint. It was May yet still the weather remained blistering hot and people were nodding off in the relief of the icy air-conditioner. I had done it myself in the library several times: living without air-con was hell when it was too muggy and warm to sleep.

I sluggishly picked up my things and stowed them away in my bag. Notebook, pens, laptop, textbook. I took a chug from my water bottle whilst I waited for everyone to file out. It was stupid trying to push through to the front: I wouldn’t win. It was a metaphor for my life, honestly.

This unit didn’t have any of my passing acquaintances in so I didn’t loiter in the foyer of the Volley Building to chat with anyone, and walked outside into the sun. It felt as though I’d walked straight into an oven: the brick beneath my feet radiated heat through the soles of my shoes and the still air burned my skin. Australia. Land of the Perennial Sun. Where the very air burns your face.

It was ten degrees cooler beneath the walkway verandas. The dry heat had made me breathless and I leant back against one of its pillars to catch some air. My lungs didn’t feel deflated and my throat wasn’t tight so I didn’t think I needed my puffer. My neck was prickled with sweat. Man, I hoped my face didn’t just slide off. I had filled the time until seven o’clock applying it all for something to do; I didn’t want it to go to waste.

Swan River University was still sleepy even close to mid-day. The usual array of food-trucks was sparse, adding to the heat waves swimming above the brick in the high sun, and the Student Café looked close to empty -- though there were some sweaty stragglers waiting near the tuckshop window for iced frappes and pressed juices. My mouth felt dry just looked at them, but I hadn’t money to spare. My disability pension hadn’t come through yet and I had to buy my medication with what remained. I wasn’t exactly able to work cashier at Woollies’.

Heat made everything worse for me. My leaky heart got leakier the more my veins dilated to let off extra heat, my blood pressure plummeted, my allergies got worse, my joints cried in agony. I was proud and yet humiliated to say I was literally allergic to summer: I came up in hives every season that needed steroid cream and tonnes of antihistamines to regulate. It was singularly the most stupid allergy in the history of the world. My leg and back braces were perhaps the only thing keeping me standing at that moment.

I ended up needing my puffer and huffed it down. Someone even stopped to ask if I was okay so I gave them a breathless thumbs-up and they left. Good dude but nah. It would pass. I could manage.

Managing was the tool that I had. No cure or fix or snake oil pill hiding in a pocket. Medication helped, braces helped, asthma puffers helped. Sleep also helped but it was also a stupid bloody traitor who deserted me when I needed it most.

God, I was fucking _exhausted_. The brick pillar dug painfully through my t-shirt, but I couldn’t find the energy to get off it. My fancy leg braces auto-locked when my feet were together and was sturdy enough I might have been able to fall asleep and not topple over. It was tempting. I had slept in worse states of pain. Even coffee had betrayed me that morning: there wasn’t an ounce of energy within my marrow.

But I couldn’t fall asleep.

I still had a core law lecture to go to in an hour.

The swooping eave of the dramatic-but-still-totally-minimalism-what-are-you-talking-about library teased me from above building 701. From the veranda of the hub-square it would be a seven-minute walk, most of it up steep access ramps that didn’t have cover and whose metal railings would burn the shit out of my hands if I tried to use them. The plan for Wednesday was normally the same: eight o’clock tutorial, an hour studying and catching up on assignments in the library, and then the two-hour core lecture in the afternoon. It was the longest day of my entire week and most days I came home so tired and in pain I would vomit dinner and collapse into bed. Normally I could manage it.

Perhaps today was not this day.

My heart skipped and ran in my chest, fast enough I could feel it against my rib cage, heaving against my lungs. Painting my face was one way of managing things and pretending I was okay enough to do Biped Things. Drinking iced coffee was another way of managing Biped Things. Relying on a veranda pillar, blood-pressure crashing from Oppressive Sun and Corticosteroids vasodilators couldn’t be remedied with either of those things.

I scratched viciously at the side of my neck and wheezed out a sigh. Goddammit. I had had a perfect attendance for six weeks: a mean feat for someone like me. I had managed twice to get to tutorials with dislocated hips without leaving halfway through to throw-up from pain. No sirree. I had ‘managed’ well. But… I was tired.

University was good.

Bed was better.

Bed was so much better.

There were pillows there. And flatness. And Diet Coke and pain medication and ice-packs. My cat, my fat old dog, my headphones. More fan-fiction. More sleep.

I would have to email the co-ordinator later to apologise. The lecture wasn’t even compulsory: less and less students had been going to them since term started. It would be okay for me to miss one. Right?

“Right,” I said under my breath. It didn’t do half to convince me proper.

I steeled myself to step off the wall. My leg braces caught the buckle of my knees and I gripped onto the thick band around my hips to steady myself. Yeah no, if I tried to stop in the library it would be impossible for me to get up again.

“Are you okay?” a voice asked. Male this time. When I opened my eyes, it was to a very tall skinny guy in glasses and cargo shorts. Probably an economics grad. He looked concerned though, so I didn’t hold it against him.

“Yeah, just need a breath,” I said and totally ignored how wheezy I sounded. Stupid bottlebrush. Completely the bottlebrushes’ fault. “I’m alright, cheers though.”

“You sure? I can call security.”

 “Nah, nah, I’m good.”

He gave me a cautious once over before leaving again. He was tall enough the ends of his gelled spikes could almost touch the beams of the veranda roof. How could he fit those spaghetti legs beneath the desks? Poor dude probably couldn’t.

It was a slow, breathless walk toward the bus stop. I took the catwalks which was longer because the long swooping path that ran between the tall bioscience buildings was too steep for me to deal with. I had already had one hip dislocation that morning and did not fancy another. A vending machine dripping with condensation tempted me in the foyer of the geoscience building but I steadfastly ignored it. There was a whole bottle of Diet Coke at home with my name on it.

Thankfully, the bus stop was sheltered and empty. Praised be all that was Holy. I sat sideways on the bench to put my legs up and didn’t bother checking the sign with the bus routes: I had taken this route enough times to have it memorised. Plus, they went every fifteen minutes, so the wait wouldn’t be terribly long. I only came close to passing out from the heat once before it arrived.

It too was empty, which I kind of expected. It was a small suburban route that mostly delivered school and university kids, and the occasional pensioner doing their shopping. If I had taken my other usual bus I would have had to fight for space.

Managing also meant taking the priority seating. I had lived too long to suffer bent legs with fucked knees and hips. The braces screamed fuck off to anyone wanting to question why I was sitting in them. They were a bane and a blessing in that sense. Being a preteen and brace-less had been hellish on public transport. Who was I even kidding: even braced or in a wheelchair, old people and arseholes still doubted my very existence like disabled younglings didn’t exist. If anyone had so much as looked at me too long, I might have snapped. Instead, I leant my head against the luggage rack and tried to relax.

I had emergency pain meds in my backpack, but I wouldn’t use them unless I was desperate. My pain was about a six and not comfortable, but the bus ride home would be another fifteen minutes at most: I could hold out.

Blissful bus air-conditioning seemed to help revitalise me some as well as another long drink from my water-bottle. Had I needed to ditch my lecture? Already I began to feel guilty. Maybe I might have felt better in the library as I did now. Maybe I should have...

Should haves were not could haves. Even though I felt less likely to keel over with pre-syncope, my whole body ached. Being kicked bodily by a horse might have been kinder. My eyes itched with tiredness and I knew the ever-present dark circles showed beneath both orange colour corrector and concealer. I couldn’t even concentrate on my phone: every line I lost my place and had to start over again, my brain all fogged from fatigue. No Obi-Wan shenanigans to numb the pain.

I concentrated instead on the window. My greatest fear was falling asleep and missing my stop, and then ended up at the end of the route with no way to get home. My pain psychologist reckoned that my intense fear of getting lost was because nobody had tried to correct my not-great vision until I was twelve, by which time I had gotten lost many, many times. I carried my glasses everywhere I went in case one of my contact lenses got lost so I wouldn’t go missing with it. Even with fantastically strong lenses, my vision still wasn’t twenty-twenty, and I got disorientated easily. Buses were Dangerous largely because I had misread their numbers before and ended up in the completely wrong place.

Thankfully, I hadn’t this time, and elected to get off a stop earlier than normal. The usual stop was onto grass and the bus-driver couldn’t lower the ramp onto it. Unlike the catwalks and access ramps at university there was little difference in walking from either stop home. Bless blocks near highways.

My suburb was an older one filled with pre-war houses and modern mini-mansions to replace the ones they thought ugly. That narked me too: there was something so _void_ in modern design, too blank and sharp to be _homey_. Knocking down such art-deco design was criminal and the modern subdivided units with blank walls and ugly spiky plants were stark and ugly next to its neighbours.

The one thing that hadn’t changed was the poured concrete footpath and it too radiated heat like a pizza stone. Air flickered and waved above it in watery lines, particles baked into an oceanic illusion. Even the magpies remained in the tall and shady eucalyptus trees instead of hopping down to hunt for bugs in the crisp manicured lawns below. Sun light glinted off the bonnets and windows of parked cars fiercely enough to set dry leaves on fire. You could have eradicated an entire ant hill with it.

My lungs struggled to breath it.

Hot dry air was cruel and my lung capacity blowed: it was as if all the oxygen stuck in my tight throat and wouldn’t travel. The more I walked, the more breathless I got. Winter was easier because the air was damper, cooler, and generally carried less pollen. Summer air that carried over the oven-like concrete and the blooming gardens was laden with flower pollens and mown-grass-particles, tickling my throat and tightening my chest, and was completely devoid of moisture. I tried sucking down water the more I hobbled along in my usual limping pace, but it was…

It was _hot_.

My dumb-arse had forgotten my sunglasses and my shitty eyeballs lacked pigment to stop their precious goo getting fried. My ophthalmologist had a conniption when he learnt I hadn’t gotten a pair of sunglasses until I was nineteen. Macular degeneration, history of glaucoma, lens subluxation, rah, rah, rah, eyeball death. Normally it would have made me laugh.

But I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. My limbs grew heavier the more I struggled down the path. If I just got around the corner, Pete the Neighbour might be on his veranda whiling away his time and he could help me home if I really needed it. My leaky heart began to spasm in my chest and tell-tale blackspots bloomed across the white-blind vision I didn’t have. Pre-syncope. Pain, sharp like a knife and as heavy as an elephant erupted in the middle of my chest and shot down my arm. My feet were swollen and probably full of the blood my heart couldn’t move and my head was beginning to swim like a tidal rip. My legs began to sag in their braces.

Actual syncope.

Shit.

I gasped desperately and made the mistake of throwing my head back. Stars. Blackness. Mostly stars. It greyed quickly to the blue of a West Australian summer sky and my lizard brain acted. Syncope: fainting. Syncope plus concrete footpath? Conclusion: _bad_. Lovely picket fence in-front of number 39, the one with the Rose Cottage sign and yellow window-frames: not good landing. Lovely soft and still-green grass verge opposite: good landing.

I didn’t feel it when I fell.  

 

 

* * *

 

 

Unconsciousness was a nothing. An existence my brain never comprehended or registered. Time was irrelevant when bodies needed repair, energy couldn’t be wasted on giving resources to awareness. A nothing between Awake and Gone. One was one or the other but never both and never caught between either.

Yet I became aware to Void.

A comforting swath of nothing. No feeling. No flesh, no bone, no blood, no heart thrumming against too-fragile tissues. No crunch of loose cartilage, no whistling breath through scarred lungs. Just being without confine. Without edges.

Awareness came slowly. My mind seeped into existence like tide in a bay. I was Not, and only slowly did I become a Was. Who was I? Myself. A humming conscious in silence. What made me an I? Thought, I supposed. And that had made me an I because I supposed my own existence. I was a Was because I decided I was a Was. This was important news.

So I said this aloud -- without a mouth, as I had no edges.

“Indeed,” replied the Void though it was not a Void at all.

 It was a Was, too. But… it was different. Even without edges I had a space and my supposes remained within myself as an I. This Was encompassed the Void that was neither black nor was it white nor was it any colour at all. It was not a Was but it was a There, even if it did not suppose as the Different and I did. The Different was bigger than a Was and a There. It Existed, and it was nicely big.

The Different made a sound I could not comprehend. “No matter how many years pass,” it said, for it didn’t need edges to make a voice, “I am forever awed by the thought of Men.”

I am not a man, I said voicelessly. I’m a woman. I am proud of this. You should be, too.

“Indeed so.” It did not fight me. Maybe it laughed. If it did, it was warm. “Thou were made so.”

Yes, I was. Like a knitted blanket someone had dropped stitches on. I was proud of this as I was proud of being a woman. These I did not say.

“Pride,” It said and then nothing else.

What of it? I asked.

“Art thou proud of thyself?”

I was a Was. Surely there should be pride in supposing and being a woman and having holes in your stitches. Even if half of these I did not have within my Was. At least, not yet.

So I answered, Yes.

“Then I am proud of thyself,” Different said and Nothing became as yellow as a runny egg. It filled the There with its colour like ink spilled in clear water.

I would be, too, I said even though I had known Different for only as long as I spoke without edges. Nothing was Nothing but there was a something inside of this nothing and it was yellow.

“Dost thou feel happiness within thyself?”

I supposed on this. Different was happy like an egg. Was I?

No, I answered diplomatically.

“How so?”

I am a Was, I said, but I am not a full Was so I am not happy. There should be more of Me. I am not as big as You.

Different laughed from yellow to orange to yellow again. “How would thee become as big as I?”

I need more.

“Of?”

Was-ness.

“Ah,” Different replied and mellowed to a softer yellow much like feathers. “Would thee be happy then?”

I supposed on this again, and then supposed, Yes, then I could Become.

“How would thee Become?”

I could… (this I had to suppose on also and enjoyed the embrace of Different’s yellow) … Do and therefore Become. I have yet to Do so I am not happy.

“This I understand,” Different replied and it was kind. I could feel Different outside of my Was but also within my Was and I welcomed Different there. My Was was my Own but Different was Welcome. Come into my parlour. Welcome to my castle.

“This is because I made thee,” Different explained.

Oh.

You did a poor job of it, I said.

Different laughed yellow-orange again. “I do not believe so,” Different said. “All creations are imperfect. It would unwise to make one so.”

Harrumph. 

Different accepted this also.

“How dost thee wish to ‘Do’?”

I don’t know, I answered without any supposing as I didn’t have any supposes about it. To Be but Have.

“And to Have is to?”

 I supposed. To… live, I answered.

Different grew as yellow as the sun but it did not burn my eyes. My eyes? They had disappeared.

“They have not,” Different reassured. He was very reassuring as he was very calm and nicely big. Sturdy as his colour appeared to be. “Is this thy desire? To Live?”

And… to See.

Orange and yellow danced like a merrily laughing expanse of ladybugs. Ladybugs which crawled onto your hand and let you hold them there ‘til you found them a home amongst green leaves and soft earth. They were shiny and pretty and did not bite. Different had no bites as he no edges anywhere within his yellows.

“This both I can do.”

Please, I said, that would be the kindest.

“Would it?” Different laughed. “I suppose.” He was not laughing at me. I was glad. “Where is it best to Live, does thee suppose?”

This was hard to suppose within my Was but I held it there like I held ladybugs Before and let them run all over what might have been hands but now were only supposes.

Where there is not always Life, I said, you must bring Life to where there is little, so it doesn’t run out.

Different hummed blue in his own supposes. I missed the yellow but knew nothing could stay the same forever. “Are thou as proud as thou art brave?”

That I knew without any supposing.

Yes, I answered.

“Thy wish to See and to Live so thee may Do so thee can Become, is that thine desire?”

Yes.

“Then tell me, what is the name thy were given after I Created thee?”

My name? It wasn’t Was or Supposed and neither was it I or Me or My. These were all that I existed off as all did innately. Those were names which belonged to everyone. A name was given by those that Live. So somewhere within my Was someone had given me a name before they had taught me how to suppose.

I looked for it within my supposes and found it with love.

Esther, I told Different. My name is Esther Eurydice.

Different smiled and the blue was swept into yellow.

“Mine name given is Eru, and thou must come Inside now to See and to Do.”

Come Inside?

But there was only yellow. Warm yellow with blue tings that grew more and more blue. I missed the yellow. I longed for it like it was my own supposes and I found myself yearning for it.

Yellow come back! I cried. If I had edges, I would have reached out, yet I couldn’t: I could only follow as the yellow grew smaller and smaller. Even the blue, a beautiful calm blue of Different’s – Eru’s – supposes grew smaller also, slipping into the Void that was only There.

I followed until the Yellow was nothing but a small burst of light, the blue a soft and wondrous glow. A hurt I knew but couldn’t name ached within me but it was not from my Supposes. The hurt came from deep within my Was where my Supposes could not touch, not even with edges. I Was and to Was was to… was to…

The yellow grew bigger the more I reached but it was not yellow. It was yellow and blue and colours too bright and beautiful to describe, for it shone welcomely and incandescently like an exploding star.

Yellow was gone but All remained.

And I reached out, bold and alone, to come Inside.


	2. Act I Scene II

Existence, like Awareness, came as the tide did. What was once swept away flowed in again, first slowly, and then all at once, to soak grains of sand and kiss the shore.

My hands came first. Starlight feelings in the tips of my fingers that shone, slowly, like butterfly wings and popping candy, through my palms and the milk of my bones to the loving, living thrum of my heart. Hearts were made as stars were and it was warm and welcome and bright within my chest. A hug from the inside, even if it leaked stardust in the wrong directions.

Then came my spine, the cradle of my pelvis, my useless but determined legs. They walked for me even though the soup of my mind didn’t tell them to. There was something beneath my feet, solid, except when I held my arms out, my hands touched nothing.

The Inside.

What was the Inside?

I walked and waited for the rest of me to gain edges.

My hair came like seaweed and fell onto my faint shoulders without decorum. My throat came, and I breathed again with lungs returned. It was nice being able to breathe, I had to say, for though I was yet to have a mouth or eyes or a nose, my lungs did enough for me. When my mouth arrived, my body rejoiced with sound – a feeling I was well acquainted with. Already, I could feel the whistle of puffer-hungry tightness.

My nose didn’t come next – but my backpack did. A tombstone weight of canvas loaded with textbooks and notebooks and a pencil case, carefully protected from a water-bottle wrapped in towel. It pulled on my shoulders and my crooked spine and my starlight hands, fading to flesh, gripped the straps to take some of the weight. Academia was a bane.

When my nose did arrive, my face felt horribly spited.

Eyes bloomed in my face like roses, buds blooming from the fertile soil of my mind. Eyelashes brushed my face soft as petals and when they opened, they were graced with light.

Just light, stripped and spiking from a single source in front of me, a source my legs were walking me to. Still, my hands held nothing except the same empty air that filled my lungs when I let my backpack go.

Where was I?

My body began to cry out in familiar aches and sharp stabs of pain. My spine ached where it was bent out of shape, my pelvic bones grinded against each other with the slackness of rubbish ligaments. Each individual rib flared out disjointedly with each breath and my hips creaked under my weight.

What had happened?

 Ditching uni, that bubbled to my mind. Too tired to stomach a two-hour lecture recited verbatim from a slideshow. Was I tired now? Yes: I was always tired. _Chronic fatigue in the Haus_. My empty hands reached for my throat to press against my jugular. I counted for what I guessed to be a minute and confusion sunk in further: I was not half-as tachycardic as normal, as if I had had a saline treatment – and that was scarce on the ground unless you were rolling with private health insurance.

I blinked and strained my eyes to see through the light and held my hands out, reaching, reaching, reaching…

For a hallway…?

At first, I thought the darkness that spotted my vision was just swimmers, but when the light bled away, it was to darkness. My eyes stung as if someone had suddenly thrown on the light inside a dark room, but it was that darkness my eyes struggled to adjust to.

I hadn’t stumbled into the middle of the road in syncope, had I?

That sounded like something I would have done – except it was dark, so… was it night-time? I squinted to try and make out streetlights, powerlines, the squat sports physiotherapist building at the end of the road junction, even the distant, twinkling city lights in the horizon. Not even the road came into focus.

That didn’t make sense either: nobody on that street would have left me on the grass until dark. I was sure I had left uni at barely ten in the morning… everyone on that street had seen me walk and wheel down it from primary school to secondary school to university. They waved to me, they smiled, their cats came up for scratches and their dogs to bark. Even the magpies on that street had ceased swooping me in spring as I’d walked down there so long they knew me, even tricked me by playing asleep on the grass and squeaking at me when I went to check on them, dancing away in a game of magpie Chicken. 

They wouldn’t leave me on the grass to stumble out onto the road in the dark… surely? Wouldn’t they have at least called an ambulance? I didn’t wear my braces for a laugh…

I wasn’t on a road.

I wasn’t even _outside_.

At first, I wasn’t sure where I was: when the lack of light grew to a soft and clarifying blue-grey, all I saw was rich, darkly textured cloth. A thick foot-long border of deep sapphire veined with thin, intricate twines of shining silver, swimming with crescent-shaped crimson fish amongst the rushing water. A river. It was soft beneath my fingertips, thick with thousands of threads yet fine as silk; so fine I felt the coarseness and texture of stone behind it. It soared up, up, up into the air, decorated with a dozen woven figures in robes with long white and golden hair, all gathered together, their hands all cradling a single, swaddled silver-haired baby. The figures had to be at least twenty-feet tall; the tapestry itself was so large I couldn’t see the top of it. A warm haze glowed from a vault in the ceiling, a crystal hanging from a golden chain, but it wasn’t bright enough to illuminate much beneath it. Maybe the bulb inside was dying.

I was inside somewhere, in a place I’d never been.

The air was cool. I appreciated that, and when I breathed in, I could smell fresh earth and sweet flowers. Even though I was confused, I remained oddly calm. Where was I? I looked away from the tapestry. Across from the magnificently humongous tapestry was… a courtyard. The entrance to it was remarkably tall as well, and there weren’t any doors to close off the hall to the elements. I stepped hesitantly towards it, my leg braces creaking conspicuously in the eerie silence.

The courtyard was not half as large as the hall: I could see where it ended, braced by impossibly tall white walls kissed with crawling vines, a dozen closed window shutters, and another doorway to an unknown. Green grass covered most of the yard save for a stone path and a beautiful fountain dancing in moonlight, three swans with their wings flown upwards, the streams of water coming out of their long and graceful necks. They looked real enough to touch.

I didn’t leave the sanctuary of the hall.

It was beautiful, the moonlight and white walls, the fountain, the carefully maintained flowers in their beds. Flowers I’d never seen before: tall ones that almost looked like hydrangeas but with bell-shaped blue flowers, small white carpet flowers the shape of stars, a hedgerow of perfectly round, flat leaves. European plants, maybe. It felt too beautiful for me to step on, to touch, in case I made it dirty or trampled the grass. Whoever looked after it must have had a very fancy set of whippersnippers to get every blade of grass the same height.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t see above the white walls of the courtyard from the doorway. Wherever I was must be at least three stories tall. Was it a hospital?

It looked nothing like a hospital. When I left the courtyard, I slowly walked down the dark, quiet hallway. Where was everyone? Why hadn’t I woken up in a bed? Why did I still have my backpack on? Had I been taken to a random hospital because there weren’t free beds anywhere else?  

Maybe I had had a weird reaction to a medication and gone sleepwalking?

(This didn’t make sense, though, as hard as I tried to rationalise where I was. When I looked down at myself, I still had my scratched up fake Converse on, my jeans, even all my braces. Surely a nurse would have taken them all off by then and I needed help to get my leg braces on: even drugged-out sleepwalking, I couldn’t’ve managed them on my own.) 

It was the lack of people that got to me. Even during the dead of night, I could hear orderlies and nurses and registrars walking through the halls. Where was everybody?

I stopped and closed my eyes, determined to hear something. After nights and days spent within children’s and adult hospitals, I knew hallmark hospital sounds: pressurised double doors of emergency rooms, nurse call-bells, code reds for the Resus Trolley, even the sounds of the hot drinks machine, the squeak of sensible rubber-soled sneakers across sterilised linoleum.

Nothing.

A whistle of wind from the courtyard, ghosting across stones and channelled through the hallway I was yet to see the end of, the heavy sound of the tapestry getting lifted by it and falling back against the wall. A distant cry of seagulls.

Was I near the ocean?

A hospital near the ocean. The only hospital I knew of near a beach was Fremantle Hospital but… it looked nothing like this. It was multi-storied, but all nineteen-eighties beige and black-window frames and Styrofoam ceiling tiles.  There was quite obviously none of that here. I took a cautious step forward and listen to the soft sound of my step echo through the empty hall.

There had to be people somewhere. I wrapped my arms around myself, the ache of bad joints and over-stretched muscles returning to them. It was just a matter of looking for and finding them, and then I could figure out what had happened and why I was… wherever I was.

The hall was lined with tapestries, taller than football posts and beautifully detailed. Some were thick with gold and silver thread that shone luminous in the pale moonlight pouring in from large, open windows. Every couple of feet I would stop to admire the scenes depicted within: great battles, domestic scenes, a mother holding her child, male figures gathered around tables with maps detailed in fine, hair-like thread. Each was different, though I soon recognised familiar faces: a tall woman with knee-length golden hair was one, appearing a leader in a medieval-like stone city over a crowd of similarly golden- and silver-haired people; looking destitute but proud amongst a grey scene of fallen corpses in gilded armour; resplendent in white amongst monstrously-tall golden-leaved trees, an arm around another silver-haired person.

A tall and fearsome dark-haired man appeared regularly also, accompanied by seven others, carrying swords and riding armoured warhorses. Unlike the Golden Lady, none appeared smiling, and none brought joy in any of their woven, progressively gory scenes. I stopped looking at those once children and babies started to appear amongst those they had cut-down. The deep red threads glistened in the light like fresh blood.

The tapestries must’ve been crafted by an artisan: they seemed too minutely detailed to be made by an automated loom. Maybe I was in a fancy posh hospital for some reason. The kinds people crowdfunded for on the Internet in desperate hopes of surgeries or cures. A black cloud of anxiety loomed over me: had I aneurysm-ed out or something, and my poor family had had to find money for specialised surgery? Was I millions of miles away from my ma, recovering from some bizarre malady associated with my shit lack-of-good-collagen? Was I in some kind of ‘alternative’ Zen hospital full of top-quality doctors who performed rare life-saving treatments during the week and positive-energy, chakra-cleansing, Gwyneth Paltrow-worthy plastic surgeries on the weekend?  

I reached up to brush through my hair and got it tangled in knots where I had tied it up in my usual bun. Not shaven off for an emergency brain surgery then, and there weren’t any cannulas on my hands or a PICC line in my arms. There wasn’t even a hospital identity bracelet around either wrist. I swallowed thickly.

No matter how… alternative a hospital was, it wasn’t _on_ to let patients wander without labels. Some of the meds I took were scheduled drugs that couldn’t be handed out casually. Even if I found myself in a mental health hospital – which made sense if it was some long-term patient who’d woven the tapestries of mass slaughter because, really, what kind of relaxing mental health facility had depictions of genocide everywhere – I wasn’t quite sure as to how I’d gotten here.

Had I been sedated or put into an induced coma during transport? Or, had anaesthesia just taken that from my memory?

My brain didn’t feel fogged even though I was confused. Although I had my usual hurts, it didn’t feel like I’d been unconscious for ages and dislocated in my sleep. I felt as normal as I possibly could under the circumstances. Walking down the hall was its usual trial without any new grievances. Wherever I was, I hadn’t been terribly injured… unless I had been drugged out of my eyeballs.

The windows on the left-hand side didn’t have glass in them. They were just empty frames in the wall, casting perfect clear moonlight onto the tapestries like stage-lights on a backdrop.

The windows overlooked other courtyards, filled with cultured flowers, more fountains, benches, and statues so beautiful and ethereal they looked ghosts amongst leaves of moon-kissed trees. One courtyard opened onto a small meadow of fruit trees. This yard didn’t look as tended as the other I had passed. I stopped in the hallway, looking out through the entryway. A tapestry of dancing horses stood behind me, circling around a green-clothed man with a blonde beard.

Citrus hung in the air, sweet and nose-tingling, and carried the music of rustling leaves and seagull cries. They looked near ripe and ready to pluck.

I carried on down the empty never-ending hall.

In the next courtyard, was a dinner table. Set for eight people, with silverware that shone in the moonlight and food still the plates. Nobody was about. It was the same as the more cultured yards I had passed, tall white walls, more flowers and shrubs in neat settings, a large tree to shade the centre of the yard from the sun.

I waited a couple moments, in case someone came to clear it away.

Nobody came and the more I waited, the more it became unbearable. Me and hard floors didn’t always mix. We weren’t enemies, per say, but I felt that as separate sentient and non-sentient entities, one of us was more malevolent than the other. Even though I had leg and hip braces, the weight of carrying myself grew from its usual grievance to horrible bone-grinding pain. Walking around stopped my joints from settling or doing the horrid joint-on-sharp-edge-of-socket thing when they were subluxing – or at least that’s what I told myself. Denial helped a lot with chronic pain. Regardless, the pain was getting worse and I desperately needed a break if I was to carry on searching for help.

The dining chairs looked terribly comfortable, even though wooden, high-backed, and beautifully carved. When I sneaked into the courtyard, I couldn’t help running my hands over the curved back and arms, smoothed and waxed to a high-shine. They appeared handmade – not every chair was precisely identical – and of oak. Or, at least, I guessed they were oak because they weren’t the cheap yellow of pine or the deep dark of jarrah. They were comfortable too, though I guiltily pulled one away from the table and its dinner plate, so whoever didn’t think I’d just decided to help myself in their absence.

  _That_ would be rude.

So, I sat, stretched out my legs (foot cramp _god why_ ), and waited some more.

The mysterious diners had eaten some of their meal before leaving. It smelt amazing, either trout or salmon with a dainty sort of sprout-cranberry-and-petal salad on the plates, drizzled with a yellow gravy. Oddly, there weren’t any forks, just spoons and knives that were old-school and not at all like butterknives: single-edged and pointed. They matched the candelabra and the other dinner ware, so maybe it was all for the aesthetic. And I could see a basket with small round flatbreads so perhaps they ate with their hands.

There was white wine too, in a drop-shaped bottle with its own stand. I could smell it from the half-drunk glasses on the table, and it was… sweet, but not too sweet, on the edge of being dry but not vinegary, with a hint of something else that was just _delectable_ …

No, that would be stealing. And rude. Even if it smelt amazing and like something I would drink -- as someone who rarely, if ever, drank anything harder than Diet Coke.

No, I wouldn’t drink it. No sir. No stealing of the strange tantalising wine. I wasn’t even thirsty. But on a hunch, I reached down and pulled my backpack onto my lap. My water bottle was in there, wrapped in a clean tea-towel to protect my university texts and papers.

The water bottle was half-empty.

“ _What?_ ”

But… wouldn’t someone have poured it out or, I don’t know, have refilled it if I’d dropped and been taken somewhere? The weirdest part was that it was still cold and rattled with a core of ice yet to melt after I’d fetched it from the freezer… earlier that morning.

My brain short-circuited.

I’d no idea how long I stared at the bottle with an empty, panicked brain at the empty table.

Retrospectively, it was kind of messed up the first sensible conclusion I’d had was that I was in a hospital somewhere. Wherever I was, no matter how I justified it, wasn’t a woo-peddling private hospital with small orchards and tapestries of mass murder. Distant seagull cries echoed in my head like a track on loop. When I tried to pull my brain away from the hospital part, nothing made sense either: there wasn’t a single building on my side of the river that was anything like this place – white-stone, medieval-y, impossibly tall, near water with seagulls. I would have noticed it by now, or at least had it mentioned to me.

I took a sip from the bottle and shivered from the icy water.

Where _was_ I?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for just throwing a transition chapter at you guys ':) 
> 
> Thank you so much for everyone's loveliness with their comments and kudos. It really means a lot to me and I appreciate it very, very much! It's very invigorating creatively <3
> 
> I'm staying somewhere cool for a couple days so I'm hoping to smash out as much as I can whilst I have the chance before I'm unleashed into the unholy heat of summer, lmao

**Author's Note:**

> OC is from Perth, Western Australia, though the university (Swan River University) is a generic amalgamation of the three big universities there. 
> 
> Let me know what you think, please, if you have the time :) I have no fic writer friends and no beta, so I've no-one to talk things with or anyone to point out mistakes. I'm also very nervous about posting this, eep.
> 
> (Also I've listened to a lot of Bollywood songs writing this and I dunno if that shows lmao)
> 
> (the title is a place-holder, from the song The More That I by Strong Asian Mothers -- I accidentally posted this by accident instead of drafting it YIKES)


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